Twitterverse rebels flout Elections Canada ban

It was surely the most succinct case of mass civil disobedience in Canadian history: revolution, 140 characters at a time.

While the threat of a $25,000 fine kept many off their keyboards Monday, political vigilantes would not be deterred by a 1938 law barring the “premature transmission” of election results.

In fact, even before a single poll had closed, digital denizens were flirting with creative ways to flout Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act — everything from using fruit and soft drinks as party proxies to starting fake Twitter accounts — all in the name of fighting legislation varyingly dubbed draconian, paternalistic and unenforceable.

Specifically, the ban applied to the sharing of election results in any electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the polling stations had closed there. This affected not only public websites and national broadcasters but also social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

“This isn’t something we want to compare to, say, U.S. civil rights or granting women the vote in Canada,” said Jason Morris, who teaches political science at the University of Northern British Columbia. “But at the same time, this is how public policy changes are often made: by people raising their hands, writing letters, protesting or, nowadays, having Tweet-ins.”

Just 45 minutes into the transmission blackout, Ottawa-based analyst Mark Blevis reported that more than 140 election results-related tweets had already been published. And by the end of the three-hour blackout period, more than 4,800 tweets had been posted using the #tweettheresults hashtag (some less serious — and less accurate — than others).

But even as UNBC’s Morris called the 73-year-old election law “anachronistic” and in need of repeal, he hastened to add that “people who are willingly going to break the law should also willingly embrace the consequences.”

The creators of Tweettheresults.ca, arguably the torchbearers for the social media protest, were not prepared to do so. The moment the Atlantic polls closed, the site shut down its live feed, citing concerns about the legal repercussions of aggregating lawbreakers’ posts.

“Having created this site, we’re in a more vulnerable position,” said Samuel, whose Harvard dissertation was on hacktivism. “But I think it’s a very unhealthy situation for a democracy when you potentially have one standard for people who innocently break the law and another for people who deliberately break the law.”

In the end, it was non-Canadians who led the digital dissent, with countless social media users from around the world offering to tweet election results emailed to them. By 8 p.m. Eastern Time — still two hours before the end of the publication blackout — the “real-time election” was in full swing online.

In fact, #tweettheresults generated so much activity in a three-hour period that it was not only the top trending topic in the country, but the most-tweeted topic worldwide, besting even Osama bin Laden.

Tweettheresults’ Samuel said the best-case scenario would be for Elections Canada to respond to the protests by changing the law, harmonizing poll closures across the country, or keeping the ballot boxes closed until all the votes are in.

“Since 1995, people have been talking about how to use the Internet to get citizens more involved in elections,” said Samuel. “This is how. You let them talk.”

Political scientist Norman Ruff, professor emeritus at the University of Victoria, was among those hoping Monday’s legal tilt would not end with activists emptying their bank accounts.

“In these times of declining voter turnout, we should encourage every kind of active participation in the election process — including instant dissemination of results,” said Ruff. “Punitive muzzling of social networking will only add a further cause of alienation from our electoral system.”